Animal Crossover: Paris Or Bust
by Mr. 86
Summary: Booker and Elizabeth are revived and reunited in a place where their world and others collide. They decide to make good on their promise and go to Paris, but such things are rarely that simple. Crossover with Dishonored, Remember Me, Shovel Knight, Pokemon, Blood Dragon, and more video games than you can shake a shotgun at. Reviews are appreciated. But be warned: Here be spoilers.


_**Animal Crossover: Paris Or Bust  
**_ **Chapter 1: Infinite Possibilities, Part 1** _ **  
**_

 _Author's note: If you'd like to know more about the world of "Animal Crossover", be sure to read the Q &A section at the end of this chapter._

* * *

 **SYSTEM ALERT: CHARACTER DATA ACCESS DETECTED.  
** **ACCESSING HARD DISKS...  
** **SEARCHING FOR PROGRAMS...** **  
**

 **FILE FOUND: "BIOSHOCK INFINITE"  
** **DLC FOUND: "CLASH IN THE CLOUDS"  
** **DLC FOUND: "BURIAL AT SEA: EPISODE 1"  
** **DLC FOUND: "BURIAL AT SEA: EPISODE 2"** **  
**

 **LOADING FILES...  
** **LOAD SUCCESSFUL  
** **RESUMING SIMULATION**

* * *

 _Anna?  
_ _Is that you?_

Booker DeWitt's mind was in a haze. There was so much that had happened. The last thing he remembered was... what was it? The water. Flooding his lungs. Anna was there. Grown up? No. Not Anna. Her name was... Elizabeth? His name was... Zachary Comstock? Or... no, that was impossible. He murdered Zachary Comstock. With his bare hands. Wait, no, that wasn't right either. Elizabeth had...

Booker fell against the wall of the small room, cradling his headache. Whatever had happened to him, he needed to be, as he would say, "shut of it", and fast. All that mattered now was the million-Silver-Eagle question: Was Anna in that crib, or was he dreaming again?

He stumbled forward and collapsed to his knees, gripping the edge of the crib. Blood dripped from his nose in a steady trickle, staining the hardwood floor in an ugly spatter of red. His breathing felt heavy and strained, and a shooting pain coursed through his lungs with each breath. To put it simply, he felt like he was about to die.

"It seems Mr. DeWitt has found himself in an unlikely place," a male voice spoke from behind him.  
"How can it be unlikely if it's the only remaining possibility?" a female voice responded immediately.

The two voices had the same detached, dry sort of tone to them. Booker knew those voices. Sure enough, as he turned himself over to look back in the doorway, a man and a woman stood there, sporting their impeccable beige suits and green neckties. They were identical in virtually every way - same red hair, same facial expression - even if the woman was a little bit shorter in height. Their personalities, he'd found, were just different enough to keep things interesting (or annoying), but this wasn't always easy to see with how they would finish each other's sentences, always seeming to know just what the other was going to say.

They were two. Yet they were one. They were Rosalind and Robert Lutece. Otherwise known as the pan-dimensional pains in his ass.

"You..." Booker muttered. "What's happening to me? Why do I-?"  
"I would've imagined he would be used to this by now," Robert quipped.  
"Just because you're used to it doesn't mean he is," Rosalind rebutted. "Most minds don't become accustomed to a million different memories in the same place."  
"I suppose. How can so much have happened when nothing has happened at all?"  
" _Will_ have happened," Rosalind corrected him. "Right, then, we'd best be off. All things considered, I'd rather not be the one to have to explain everything when he finds out."  
"Finds out what? What are you not telling me?!" Booker demanded. The two of them ignored him.  
"So many new doors opening..." Robert began.  
"...Where once there would have been only walls."  
"Yet so many walls..."  
"Where there once might have been doors."

The last thing Booker saw before he lost consciousness was the two of them leaving the room and closing the door behind them. He never even got to see if Anna was in the crib. Perhaps he never would. In time, he would find it didn't matter.

* * *

 _I can see all the doors...  
_ _And what's behind all the doors.  
_ _And behind one of them...  
_ _Incredibly...  
_ _I see him._

Elizabeth didn't have the words to explain what she'd seen, but somehow she knew. It was done. Atlas was doomed. Sally was saved. Jack was going to rescue her, and Rapture would become nothing more than the forgotten, sunken wreck it was meant to be.

It was too bad she wouldn't see it, on account of her now bleeding to death and all.

Atlas knew his way around a pipe wrench. If nothing else, she had to give him that. The cracks in the front of her skull from his so-called "medical procedure" had probably made it worse, but she knew he would never really have gone through with a lobotomy. He was too proud. Too power-mad. Too utterly, tragically predictable. As she'd said, never underestimate the fallibility of the egomaniac.

If she'd wanted to, she could have gotten the drop on Atlas in any number of ways. She could have frozen him and left him to thaw none the wiser. She could have possessed him and made him turn on his goons before knocking himself out cold. She could have turned invisible, grabbed Sally and made a break for it. Hell, she could have just shot him and been done with it. But despite the sheer variety of escape plans that had been available, she'd known before she came back to Rapture that chickening out this late in the game wouldn't have made things right. So she let him kill her, knowing that he was sealing a fate a thousand times worse for himself in the process.

And yet, that thought didn't make her feel any better. Revenge, as she had learned from her time in Rapture, is like a cheap prostitute: So tempting at first, so pleasurable during the act, but the sickness it leaves makes one question how much of it was really worth it. Still, Sally was safe. That was all that mattered. So she died there with a smile on her face, hearing the sound of a crashing plane ringing in her mind, and noting with some irony that it wasn't usually the sort of thing one smiles about.

That was when the lights went dark.

"Tragic," Robert spoke as he appeared out of apparent nothingness.  
"I would've thought you would be pleased with this outcome," Rosalind replied, following him out of the shadows.  
"It's certainly much better than the alternative, under the circumstances."

Robert knelt down and closed Elizabeth's eyes. Sally watched the two of them intently, not sure of what to do. They simply ignored her.

"Difficult to fathom why she would choose this path," Rosalind muttered.  
"One cannot drown all of their regrets in pinot noir alone..." Robert paused for just a moment. "...sister."

Rosalind looked at Robert with just the slightest hint of surprise, then turned back to examine the wreckage all around them. Or perhaps the wreckage that was soon to be. It was tough to understand the way one thinks when they see time in its true form. Or the closest equivalent.

"Or Plasmids, as the case may be," Rosalind finished.  
"She's free now."  
"Only as free as she may choose to be."  
"How do you suppose she'll react?"  
"Even we can't make a prediction like that, brother."  
"Why not?" Robert asked as he stood up.

He could swear at that moment that Rosalind flashed him a cheeky smile, so small and subtle that most other people would have never noticed.

"Because as of this moment, constants and variables no longer hold any meaning."

With that, the lights flickered and they were gone once more.

* * *

The first thing Booker saw when he awoke was the glass tube around him, splitting open like elevator doors with a rush of white smoke. His eyes opened, and he breathed in a lungful of fresh air as his body sprung to life. He felt a lot better now. In fact, he felt better than he had in what seemed like decades. But as Booker slowly stepped out of the chamber, there was one thing he had to know.

"What the-? Where am I?" he thought out loud.  
"You're in the Nexus, Mr. DeWitt," a small voice said from nearby.

People needed to stop calling him that. Booker turned to where the voice had come from. What looked like a young girl, wearing a dress and pointed hat with a red and yellow checker pattern, sat in a chair nearby. Immediately Booker saw what was off about her, though - she looked like a cartoon character brought to life. Her hands were like mittens, and her large head was home to a pair of enormous eyes.

"Who are you?" Booker asked her. "Wait. _What_ are you?"  
"I'm a human," the girl said. "Just not the kind you may be used to. My world was drawn to be a little more... stylized."

"Your... world?" Now he remembered. The Luteces had brought him to another universe to find Elizabeth and rescue her from Comstock. 'Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt' were a set of words he'd heard enough for a million million lifetimes. Things had just gotten stranger after that. A flying city? Bottled liquids which let one summon crows or launch fire from one's fingers? It would all sound like a bad dream, if he didn't remember it so vividly.

"Yep," the girl nodded. "My name's Ai. Have a seat... would you kindly?"

Ai patted the back of another chair and winked, hoping he'd get the joke. He didn't. Oh well. Booker took a seat, and Ai turned to him to begin the long and arduous process of... ah, the hell with it.

"I hope this doesn't come as too much of a shock," Ai said, "but everybody has to find out how this place works eventually. Otherwise they either go into denial or go nuts from the cabin fever. It's not pretty."  
"Find out what?" This must have been what the Luteces had meant.  
"How do I put this?" Ai wondered. She could never tell how someone would react to hearing the news. Some were glad. Others were horrified. Still others were relieved. "You see, Mr. DeWitt, the story of your life, or your life as you knew it, is over."  
"Am I dead?"  
"Not quite. The Nexus brings together people and places from all sorts of worlds once everything that was supposed to happen in them is finished. Think of it like a giant after-party for hundreds of plays. Your story, my story, they're all just stories, but here, they're brought to life."  
"That's impossible," Booker responded reflexively.  
"So is a city that flies, but you went to one of those, if I'm not mistaken," Ai stated with a shrug.

Booker didn't like the implications of what this girl was saying, but she was right about one thing: He'd seen too many strange things in his life to be rattled by the idea of the world being fake. Nevertheless, he blurted out, "Prove it."

"Tell me about your childhood," she replied.

He couldn't. By God, he couldn't. The earliest memory he had was of the battle at Wounded Knee, and even that was a blur. Could it be true? He sat there for a while, eyes wide open, Ai innocently rocking back and forth next to him. After a few minutes, she broke the silence.

"The truth is, Mr. DeWitt..." Ai scratched her head. "Whatever you _do_ remember is what really happened. Well, as far as anyone knows or cares, anyway. It's a little hard to explain. The point is, what you think you did, or what you may remember doing, isn't important anymore." Ai hopped out of her chair and started walking toward the door. Booker got up to follow.

"You look like the kind of guy with a troubled backstory, but your slate is clean, and your conscience can be too."  
"Good luck with that. I've killed a lot of folks in my time."  
"Eh, the Nexus doesn't sweat the small stuff. If you ended up here, I don't see why anyone else from your world might not." Ai smiled. "Anybody in particular you want to seeeee?~" she said in a sing-song voice.

"Now that you mention it, I need to find my daughter."  
"What's her name?"  
"Anna."  
"Brunette?"  
"Yeah." Could it be her?  
"Blue eyes?"  
"Yes!"  
"Well-endowed?" Ai cupped her hands in the air near her chest area. This was where Booker drew the line.

"What?! NO!" Booker yelled. Ai put her hands down and sheepishly put them behind her back.  
"Oh, okay," she said. "It's just that there was a girl through here earlier with that description and she told me to wake you up."

That was when Booker got a thought. Dark hair and blue eyes like Anna, but _breasts_? That meant someone older, and that could only mean one thing.

"Wait a minute," Booker said, trying to get this straight for himself. "Elizabeth? Elizabeth is here?!"  
"Well, she _was_ ," Ai answered. "I think she should still be around here somewhere waiting for you."

She opened the door for Booker. As he hurried out, she closed the door behind her and wandered away, presumably to find another respawn chamber to open. Or to find something to eat that wasn't a pear. Yeah. That was a... long story.

* * *

Elizabeth had awoken in a burst of steam, coughing and retching. That had been the worst night's sleep _ever_. It was like everything she'd ever done had suddenly come back and hit her whole body like a freight train. After a few moments, she got used to the sensation, and after making a mental note to never smoke or drink again (one which she likely wouldn't end up keeping), she stepped out of the chamber to look around. Nobody was there.

The room looked strangely empty, despite being arranged like a small office. There was a simple wooden desk with a chair, and a curious box-shaped device was affixed to the wall on the opposite side of the room. A glass of water sat on the desk, along with a small pill bottle with a large red cross insignia on the side. Suspicious, perhaps, but Elizabeth was too focused on relieving her pounding headache to care.

Elizabeth took the two pills sitting in the bottle and downed them with the glass of water without even taking a breath. It was only once she'd done so that she realized exactly what a stupidly amateur mistake she'd just made, but when, after spending ten seconds just standing there, she had not collapsed and died (again), she came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, ordinary water and medicine. Now she just had to figure out who put it there.

"Hello?" she called out. "Is anyone there?" There was no answer.

Being a video game character, and one from the _BioShock_ series, no less, she knew she had no other option than to find out where she was, and more importantly, _why_ she was there. But something strange happened when that thought crossed her head: A ghostly, seafoam-green arrow extended from her feet, trailing along the floor and traveling under the door before fading away into thin air. Elizabeth was taken aback, stepping backward with a gasp and watching the arrow vanish in surprise. It was unlike anything she'd ever seen before... but if that was the case, why did it look so familiar?

"Well, better than nothing," she said to nobody in particular. With that, she exited the room, without looking back and without a single clue what she had gotten herself into. Was this her fever dream? Her last dying hallucination as she bled out? Or was she just now waking up for the first time?

The wooden walls of the room she left gave way to... something else. She found herself in a large, circular lobby, lined with doors all around it. Instead of paint or wallpaper, the walls in this new place were shiny, solid chrome. The very structure of it all seemed to be exposed, with glowing blue lines trailing along the walls, making shallow curves and sharp angles alike. She'd never seen anything like _this_ behind any of the doors. Strange. What was even stranger was how the room was furnished: A large round glass coffee table, encircled with red velvet couches and the occasional potted tree. For such an otherworldly location, it all seemed so... _normal_. Why, then, was there nothing around to eat?

It wasn't really that she was hungry or anything. It was just that no matter where she went, whether in Columbia or Rapture, there always seemed to be something lying around on a table or in a drawer to chow down on. Now that she thought about it, that _wasn't_ really normal. Especially not such things as pineapples in chocolate boxes, nor those potatoes that Booker had, for some unexplained reason, found in a toilet once. She'd been relatively certain those weren't potatoes until Booker had taken a bite of one and she'd vomited a little in her mouth. The thought of how absurd it had been brought a small smile to her face, even as it made her want to gag.

Now she needed something to eat just to get her mind off of it. It was lucky for her, then, that Ai, whom neither she nor Booker had chronologically met yet, came strolling around a nearby corner, juggling three pears. That was the only thing she wanted to do with the accursed things these days. When Ai caught sight of Elizabeth, she looked for a little too long and lost her concentration. The pears flew up in the air, with one hitting her right on the head and the other two falling haphazardly to the ground.

"Oh! Hi!" Ai said cheerfully. To say Elizabeth was confused would be like saying the ocean is wet. But she held it in for the moment and decided to humor this strange girl.  
"Um, hello," Elizabeth answered awkwardly. "Can you tell me where I am? The last thing I remember is... dying."  
"Oh, you're from one of _those_ worlds, are you?" Ai picked the pears up off of the floor. "You must be new here. Come sit down and I'll explain everything. But I warn you, you might not believe what I'm about to tell you."

Elizabeth had seen a billion different ways her life could have unfolded. None of them went anything like what she had just been told.

"So... it wasn't real?" Elizabeth had a thousand-yard stare on her face that would put her previous, omniscient self to shame. Ai shook her head at this all-too-common existential crisis. She'd rehearsed what to say in just these sorts of situations.  
"Just because it was a story doesn't mean it wasn't _real_. Around here, you learn to just go with the flow when it comes to what you remember." Ai slid a pear across the coffee table. "Pear?"

Elizabeth took the pear and rolled it around in her hands. She knew there was something off about it, the exaggerated stature of the girl who had been carrying it notwithstanding. It was too... perfect. Too geometrically flawless to be any normal pear. Even so, as she took her first bite of it, she couldn't deny that its taste beat anything she'd had in the last while. She could almost feel her stomach settling as her tongue got used to its tangy flavor.

"What do I do now?" Elizabeth asked.  
"Now? Now you can do whatever you feel like. Travel, play cards, get into brawls... Heck, I used to be an errand girl, and now I'm helping some friends of mine start a currency exchange."

Elizabeth instinctively reached into her pocket. Somehow, she had a few dollars left over from Rapture. Maybe it _was_ possible to take it with you after all. She wasn't sure what she could do with it, but it probably couldn't hurt to have it around.

"Will... others be waking up?"  
"I and some of the others go around activating the respawn chambers every once in a while. Anybody in particular you were thinking of?"

Elizabeth made a determined fist with her right hand, squeezing the core of the pear into pulp from the sheer tension. Her lips pursed up and she started to jitter anxiously. If what Ai was saying was true, then maybe there was a chance. Did she dare to hold onto that hope?

Yes. Yes she did. She'd come too far, been through too much, to back down from an opportunity like this.

"Could you... do me a favor?" Elizabeth said slowly. Ai closed her eyes and smiled.  
"Sure," she answered.  
"Find Booker DeWitt. The normal one."  
"I gather he's someone special to you."  
"...more than you could ever know."

* * *

 **SIMULATION PAUSED  
** **SAVING DATA...  
** **DATA SAVED**

* * *

Hello, people! Since you're here, you're probably curious what this is all about. _Paris Or Bust_ is a spin-off of _Animal Crossover_ , a video game mega-crossover which I (Mr. 86) created with the help of my brother, who goes by SimYouLater. In this section, I'll answer a few questions for those who are unfamiliar with how this world works.

 **Q: What's the deal with _Animal Crossover_?  
** A: _Animal Crossover_ takes place in "The Collection", an artificial universe created by a woman named Susan Xinshi (or "Susie X") out of her extensive computer/video game collection. How'd she do this? In her words, "magic". _Animal Crossover_ itself was named for the copy of _Animal Crossing: Wild World_ which was the first game added to the Collection. This is where Ai comes from, as does her best friend Yu.

 **Q: What makes the Collection special as opposed to other crossover universes?  
** A: Two things. Firstly, it favors gameplay over story, granting its characters the abilities and equipment they had during the action of a game rather than its cutscenes. The other special thing about it is its debugging system, known as "The Nexus". The Nexus contains hundreds and possibly thousands of doors, which connect to every unopenable door in every game world in the Collection. This is what allows characters to travel from one game world to another. It also has equipment lockers, vehicle garages, and best of all, respawn chambers to prevent anyone from truly dying. There's just one catch: Ennui.

 **Q: Ennui? As in, boredom?  
** A: That's right. You see, li'l miss X put the Nexus online on October 27th, 2012, meaning that every game series released before that point experienced a "dead period" in its world, where no noteworthy events would happen, equal to the real-world amount of time that elapsed between the release date of its latest game and the activation date. In some cases, this was only a few weeks or months, but the unlucky Master Chief ended up taking a catnap for _eleven years_ , since Susan didn't own any Halo games except the very first one. A few of the inhabitants of certain game worlds ended up becoming somewhat... warped in personality thanks to the cabin fever.

 **Q: So where do I find the stories of these other characters?  
** A: Just go onto my author profile and find "Animal Crossover". But if you feel like sticking around with this one, then prepare for a story that's partly huggable, partly horrifying, and partly hilarious. As you'll soon discover, for Booker and Elizabeth, it's Paris... or bust.


End file.
